Vulon Saviik
by Elira Rose
Summary: Tahlia Harlantha, a simply complex Imperial woman, raised in the Dark Brotherhood, gets dragged into far more intense adventure than she bargained for, and far too soon after the death of her father. Her fate is hung in the balance, dangling by a thread, plots will unfold to harm all around. What of love? Things get even darker than the Dark Brotherhood themselves can handle...


Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Oblivion but my OC(s). Heck, I don't even own a copy of the game because my dad bought it for more!

Read on awesome people!

Prologue; Knowledge Decapitates Affection

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Blatant hazel eyes stared into her moss-green, as if his orbs were the sharpest razors, aimed to slash away the vines that kept her deepest secrets in concealment. Where the very core of all her vividest anxieties, adorations, insecurities, pleasures all made residence. Those eyes' goal was to make way to arcane compartments of her soul, read their contents, and then use those to rain down harm to destroy her.

But why was his destination to destroy her? Because if she could not be his, then she would not be anyone's property. If he could not rule the world with vengeance as his shield, wrath as his every-glistening shortsword, and her as his lover, than no one would be permitted to.

"I am not your acreage, M-" She began with enlightened attentiveness that was caked in saccharine, but was not conceded to finish her articulation at the caterwauling interruption.

He rigidly slapped a gloved hand across her cheek without hesitation, the terseness of the leather searing her skin unsympathetic in the slightest. It left a smoldering triad-finger-print behind, fizzing with excruciating heat and overbearing throb.

She noticeably gasped as her head snapped sideways to the left, the frail sound pathetically released from her lips into the tense air without her permission. It took hardly the time of an inhale for tears to spring into her eyes, and even less for those waterworks to slip out of the corners and route down her cheeks, moistening the rosy skin.

"Silence," The venomous heckle trailed eagerly at the heels of the strike, his tone of voice suffused in supremacy and alien malignance. There was not even a camouflaged under layer of charted affection to convince this was just another of his jests - as exaggerated and cruel the joke might be birthing to be.

"Do not be beguiled to think I will not repeat my action, Star." He added to the already unwelcomed display of colloquy and activity. Even the once abundantly adored monikor came out in replica to an acidic animus.

"Why?" She concernedly weighed and ran a fine-toothed comb through her words before distributing them in a prudent whisper, summoning all her self-control to heed her sobbing at a pause long enough to fulfill her charge. "Why have you become like this?"

"I love you, Tahlia, I do," He assured as ace as he was adept to perform in his condition of grandeur. "But you are becoming a liability; a hindrance in my task."

"What task?" She demanded with little to no faltering potency casually ebbing back into her vocals. She swiped the tears off her face in a flurry of digits so that her pupils would not be blurry. "You never tell me anything! You leave me flailing in the dark for some hint that never makes its appearance."

"I kept it from you so I would not be required to undertake such distasteful precautions," He shook his head in a melancholy, yet indifferent posture, frowning morosely as he nonchalantly took a gingerly-distinguished stride in her direction. "But it seems you pester me to do what I wish not to. You know why I say these things, yet you are a good actress, my dear. I applaud you for that. But you are still as naive as an infant. So much potential brimming inside of you, but under nurtured. Sad. We could have done so much together..." He captured her gaze in an unblinking stare, not in any mood to let it go.

Revelation settled over her like a cold stone her chest, making shivers tingle her vertebrae resentfully. "You cannot do this, it is not humane." Suddenly having the incapability of standing any longer, and also apprehensive of what he might do if close enough, she shakily staggered toward the chair at his desk and leisurely descended into the seat. She was breathless and reeling at this new tide of events.

The desk and chair were made of fine mahogany, furnished to look extravagant. The 72" wide surface of the desk was messily ordained with disorganized paper stacks, a recently used inkwell and quill, a half eaten green apple, tomes, scrolls, and books on many randomized subjects, but she knew they had some link. Everything that he happened upon was connected in some shape or way when filled out by this man.

She was not astounded by the manifestations that had thus far fallen. She had been contemplating these things for weeks; it was only her mental state that was not reacting in expectation

"I must," He said without uncertainty; concrete doctrine permanently engraved in his vocal layout like the inscription on a gravestone. "As you must drink to stay hydrated and in turn live. As you must eat to keep your bodies nourished with vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, and again, keep living. As you must have oxygen to fill your lungs, to keep your heart pumping, and oh, live! As you must do all of this, I must accomplish my duty to the only woman I ever loved, save you. To live. It is the only reason to keep me in this realm."

There was no telling him otherwise; his convictive mindset was cryptic in his psychosis' eye.

"So you're going to eliminate me," She spoke it as conclusive rather than interrogative; fact instead of query. She would not undermine that she was indeed afraid of what demise would have in store for her, but she would be not relent to give it the bravest face she could muster. That was how she strived to be - sturdy no matter the circumstance.

"That would be the most suitable option on my part, aye?" He declared it in a coyly idiosyncrasy, reclining his neck in the ever slightest to stare at her lopsidedly. A gleam in his irises reveled in the devilry of some other alternative. "But no, Star, that is not at all my cognizant procedure. Although a mishap could or could not transpire without my permitting that would without a qualm end your life, I will not purposefully decapitate off your cycle yet. Instead, I shall just have to maim you in an adexterious scheme, which would leave you inadequate of reminiscence of me."

"That's an entire year of my memories just...vanishing," She reported in a nearly inaudible voice, her eyes expanding in width to glimmer with even more vibrant green color.

"I know, it is incomprehensible," He consummated; uncrossing the arms he had folded behind his back, and then let them suspend enervated at the sides of his thighs, and fully terminated the gap separating them. "I have concocted a serum. To explain it briefly and so you can decipher, it feeds on your impressions of the brain. I have conducted it to only be present in your body extensively solely to devour any memories you are unfit to carry any longer, as you already have figured, anything to do with me. It is very ravenous, I should warn you, but the amount of feasting is all dependent on the amount of serum that is poured into your bloodstream. Notably enough, the more I give you, the less memories that are exterminated. It took many long hours of testing and experimentation, but I finally mastered the exact measurement I need to erase the unwanted impressions."

She did not dare ask what or whom he had tested said research on.

"There is no way to reacquire them, I can see it plain on your face," She aciculated out the explicit to her so she would wind up being lugged through an additional harangue. "You go to all this vexation just to evade executing me?"

He scintillated a dashing smile this turn, one that could rapture. "I do so admire when you use that shrewd wit of yours... You are correct. It is so effective; it completely wipes out the memories from ever being recovered by your mind..." He diligently did not acknowledge her on the discord of sparing her.

"...and not a soul knows of /us/," She surveyed the rest of his iota. "I was not even alleged to be here in Cyrodiil. Everyone here accredits that I've been in Skyrim for the last year..."

"Precisely, dear!" He praised freely. "You are a sly little pigeon when you do not favor to be noticed."

Her familia all abided in the Hjaalmarch region of Skyrim, for as long as her cognizance could equip. Each one of them was a sector of the Dark Brotherhood family of Skyrim, taking out any victim they were hired to assassinate through the Dark Sacrament mercilessly. To outsiders, they were nothing less than bloodthirsty cut-throats. But to the children of Sithis, they towered in splendor of making the Dread Father glad.

But every autumn, her papa, Rhys Harlantha, would herald their Imperial family of four to visit cronies here in their homeland of Cyrodiil, and to escape the tundra winters of Skyrim. Their cronies were, without diffidence, more affiliates of the Dark Brotherhood. Those times were full of less assassinating (though it still eventuated, how could it not among their faction?) and more mirth to fill their time.

She could tell you in kinetic detail of a time when she was but a little girl, of when Vicente Valtieri (he had been the only constituent of the Cheydinhal sanctuary they were really acquainted with) had taking her chubby toddler hand (the right, she remembered with great accuracy) in his algid phalanges, and she had busted into sobs and milk-curdling cries.

It had alarmed him, such was barefaced, and he did not falter to release her fleshy limb. She still knew that her reaction behind the outburst had been because he was disengaged of the frequent warmth her childish touch was so affectionately attached to. That feeling a skin so hiemal was more than she could knob. Now it did not molest her so much, she ostended Vicente to be a charismatic second father whom she both adored and respected with vast prominence.

They sojourned Cyrodiil yearly for her entire childhood, invariably procrastinating leave longer than was prime the agenda.

The only spectacle that yielded their regular vacationing was her father infected with an obstinate illness.

She had still been imprudent then, but not shortsighted. She fathomed this was not his quotidian bout of a cold, but something far more intimidating and critical. She evoked this span of memories increasedly than the other ones; appalling how cataclysm had a superlative effect on clarity than ravishment.

Papa ate little, if at all. And it was always liquefied. Soup and stew. She still pondered how one did not vegetate delirium with the duplicate grub serially.

Her papa steadily hovered palliness of skin tone, not having his usual roseate complexion that schlepped his shamrock-green jocose optics. Healers also checked up recurrently, with their plastic smiles and sundry-colored medicines. But they always left grimmer than the last in spite of their facades to perceive other than.

Her mum, Audrey, would tarry Cyrodiil as much as she could after that (when her papa was vigorous enough to fend for himself), but it was not as affordable as when her papa was a hundred-percent. So instead of every year, it was every two years, and the rhythm undeviatingly renounced as the years lunged.

Her papa started to sprout heartier at the starting winter, but that promptly backtracked as the months went by.

At only thirty-eight, Rhys Harlantha lost his battle with his untitled sickness, leaving behind a young thirty-six year old wife, and eighteen and fourteen year-old daughters.

That day he left her on her own still took its expense on her substantiality. He was uncustomarily polar and erratic, consistently having to take an additional gander to recognize the herd in his vicinity.

The flashback guided tears to her eyes.

The healers performed all they could that morning, and concluded morbidly there was little their qualifications could render at this period. They ceded their commiseration and authorized that mum should essentialize to keep her papa complacent as could be achievable, and that he should lavish his last days on Nirn with loved ones.

For three years, they employed the healers, whose obligation was to inhibit this sort of calamity, could not emancipate her papa from his contamination. Their enervated-derived money and moxie were in withered vainglory.

She would not under any plight have fidelity in those priests again. Never.

Her mum had escorted her and Noella into papa's shabby bedchamber, and they wearied the integral day in the throng of her evanescent father's presence. They did not eat, they did not drink, and they did not sleep. They just rhapsodized, subdued their sobs, and made the uttermost of his final moments.

He passed away with quirked lips and clenched eyes. And they all brooded in grief for lingering months.

It, the rabbet, still gnawed incessantly on her oomph. She felt utterly lost without her papa. As if when her papa left this turf, he took a chunk of her with him, leaving behind a scorched spirit that could never be renewed.

What irked Tahlia the inferior was when her mum married an ill-natured Dark Brotherhood associate, Tyce Zebullon, a Redguard, not a year after her papa's ephemeral. Whom Tahlia was suspicious that he only coveted for her mum's body rather than cherished her for the woman she was.

After the marriage, they wholly gridlocked going to Cyrodiil altogether.

After another six months, now twenty, she was queasy and narcoleptic of the irrational prattle and the stuffiness of the interminable unbalanced ritual her life had decayed into, and she invoked on palms and knees for her mum to grant her to once more visit Cyrodiil. With a wee leverage, and being a spur in her step father's ribcage, they were bounteous than charmed to allow her such a frill. Every winter and fall she spent in Cyrodiil, with other family members of their faction.

Then at twenty-three, she encountered this exotic man with nectarous words and chipper virtues, who she tussled a relationship with after only a month of association. He was the acumen behind why she had ambled in Cyrodiil in obscurity this summer, instead of rebounding back to her mum and sister. But these latter couple months, she became savvy of the telltale beacons of his macabre occult, and now they were here. The man she thought she would marry would be her undoing.

"It is going to be caustic, and you may even zest psychotic from not being adroit to revive the visions," He fondly smiled afresh - did it even minify? - embowed his silhouette to arc down to her agnate, and circumspectly caress and stroke her incurably velvet-soft, unsmudged cheek. "And you will never know it /is/ unfeasible for you recollect them, because you will not anamnesis this dialogue."

"If I have learnt you at all," She verbalized lackadaisically; voice split and eyes steadfast. "It won't be a cinch inducement of serum in my veins. That is far too traditional."

"You know me too swell, my star," He crooned boastfully, mildly flowing his phalanges along the back of her neck now, just so daintily touching the disrobed skin with his tips that it duplicated a wing-like consistency. Abducting back his hand to holiday adjacent his hip, he urged his creamy lips to her clement neck flesh. "We could have been something great." He groused against her.

Eyes broadening, she intuitively culled from his smooch, the unmixed tribute of this man having any lovey-dovey reprocity with her generating her throat to tauten with abhorrence. This was not the man she inaugurated having affection for a year. And she just lauded the Nine her mum and papa had raised her virtuously and she did not endow away her purity before matrimony.

She did not even have to speculate to see his facial vicissitude; Tahlia could sense the perturbation it bespoke transmitting from his anatomy, so sonorously it could be correlated to being hammered with a goblin's club. His riled glower toward her cringing away could crucify if it was able.

"At least know I did care for you," He established coldheartedly, straightening to once more tower over her with a far off scrutiny in his pupils.

Her unshaken engrossment and laconism crowned her reply.

Snatching his surveillance from her's, he glided behind her chair casually, the only motion coming from his shuffle of feet against flooring, that was as willowy as a butterfly on the breeze, and stopped just where her peripherals could not descry his tactics. He was lanky enough doing this took little to no travail on his part.

Hands went to her shoulders, at first a supple touch, which gradually alternated into a firmer massage; his grasp rubbing upward and downward along her shoulders and shoulder blades. Its target was to deter the vehemence from her muscles, but his stroke on her only accouched the opposite. Her muscles rigidified even more; her heart thwacked against her chest without pause; her respiratory became accelerated as she awaited his transfer of motive.

Many effervescent possibilities swarmed her intellect, too many to distinguish likelier from least with what time she had. The only stir she could endeavor was monitor and wait for his course of rush. Tahlia was a hunted fawn, which was unequivocally how he desired her. She had no tool but her fists, so she was defenseless. He had programmed this out better than she expected.

She bedeviled herself from being as disregardful as his hands came away from her.

Regardless of her intimate emphasis for her neck to swivel around and see what her ex-lover was up to, it spurned with a burning sensation and would not dislodge from its impassioned position. It seemed phobia crippled her.

Unstirred by her mute chaos that he sanctioned plainly on her body's language, his hands did not recoil to her shoulders, and he found it infatuating to survey her for a few beats. She really was a beautiful creature; her chestnut-brown locks were roped into a simple braid that rested on her shoulder and dangling over her left breast. Her cloying oval-shaped face and radiant complexion was boosted by her moss-green eyes. She was svelte; lean and well-built in stature and muscularity that was ornamented in a black and burgundy outfit. And best of all, she had an IQ that was an outstanding. A compassion that made the priests look narcissistic. A vulnerability and suspicious, rather grim crust that was defined with her glitches that could crawl on for miles. A spunk that was a work of art. A mystery that left you grasping for more knowledge, and much, much more. It was a pity he would not squander the rest of his years with this brilliantly complex woman.

Something was clasped in his fist out of visibility; he held it behind his back, and a smirk was beginning to etch its way onto his lips. And what was his aim, which outweighed the profession of love? To destroy her. She always knew it would come down to this.

Tahlia clenched both her eyelids and lips shut; a quake trifled with her spine. She swallowed her whimper.

And then it collided; she could feel the shift in oxygen as his standpoint fluctuated; as he revealed the arms from behind his back at a slow-motion rate and raised whatever weapon or accessory that was embellished in his fist. Then, it singed through air toward her. She could feel all of this without her eyesight to relay it to her.

He pierced it into her abdomen brutishly, and left it there as he yanked his arm away, as if aflame.

It was not metal; it did not have the chilled coat that a metal instrument had. It was slim, but it was not something flimsy that could break with the smallest hint of pressure. What he sunk deep into her stomach was stick-thin, yet inflexible and knife-edged. And he did not chagrin by just slicing through the membrane layer; he went all out and stuck it abyssal to possibly cut valuable nerves. Clearly, he wanted it to accomplish its duty with a little extra zing in the already overpowering mixture.

The affliction came quickly upon impact; it speared her nerves and sent shrilling waves of aches to smother her body and blur her sight without second look back. But something else came along with it; a liquid that stretched its long tendrils to leak its poison into her veins and burn like hot oil poured over her head. It was like being torn apart from the inside out, only by a substance rather than blades.

She felt a hefty amount of blood soak her dress as it gushed from the wound.

A scream curdled her ears; her own, stuffed full of the purest agony that danced along with her spasms.

Her body began to violently convulse; and she could consign to Oblivion about having any willpower at this time. The pain was so wicked her thought process would not cooperate not matter how concentrated she wanted to be.

And then, the void of unconsciousness would not miss the party. It grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her into the underworld of irresolute coma.

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A/N: AGHHHH... I'm sorry. The ending is totally awful, rushed and sloppy and I am terribly disappointed with it. I just lost all creativity and couldn't find a better way to explain it. Plus several days working on this and I'm already sick of it and wanting it done. ._. Failure...

So, I hope it suffices well enough... This is just the prologue, and I know there are a lot of things that are unanswered and undefined, but I did that on purpose for my whole storyline to file out. Plus my house is a flipping sauna so my brain is fried. So, if it is a complete failure, my apologies go out to you.

Errors will be in there! I have proofread it, but I have a knack for over-looking things. Le'sigh. Don't hate me. Suggestions, reviews, questions, are all loved! But I'm a baby and can hardly take criticism, so handle me gently...

Also, please don't give me crap about the origin of names... I personally don't have the time to make sure the names are accurate...just bear with it. I like unique, unordinary names, so it's my specification. And this is mainly a Dark Brotherhood fic, but I'll probably mix up the storyline.

And if I sound completely idiotic in my writing, I'm sorry. I am not a mastermind scientist or historian or yadadada. I do my best. But please, do not offend my writing style. I'm finally over completely hating it and I don't what that destroyed.

I may not be a regular updater. I'm busy lil' bee and I'll be lucky to get a chapter up a week. I will try to do better or at medium, but I cannot make promises. ):

Seriously though, I love reviews. They keep me pumped and wanting to stick with this. So please review!

Future thanks to anyone who favorites and or reviews!

Anything I left out shall be added in chapter one's author notes.

-Ray Ray


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